DOI

10.5703/1288284316351

Abstract

The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) administers the INDOT Local Public Agency Program (LPA Program) to provide funds to local public agencies for transportation related improvement projects. The funds distributed through this program are federal funds and they are provided on a reimbursement basis (i.e., LPAs spend their own money on project related expenses then submit an LPA invoice-voucher for reimbursement). LPAs typically receive 80% reimbursement of allowable expenses.

This project ran concurrent with a number of changes already taking place within INDOT to improve the LPA Program. The purpose of this project was to take a systematic look at all the factors impacting the overall length of projects and to find additional recommendations to shorten the time from Call for Projects to Letting. In addition, the project also collected feedback from numerous stakeholders around Indiana in an attempt to get an early indication on the effectiveness of changes already underway within the LPA Program.

During the initial phase of this project, a series of people with first hand LPA experience were interviewed about specific "good projects" (ones that finished on time or nearly on time) and "bad projects" (ones that were cancelled or finished well beyond their originally scheduled completion date). Following those initial interviews, a series of interviews were scheduled with LPA stakeholders around the state to look for common themes, "pain points," and improvement ideas.

This report documents those common themes and lists a series of recommendations to address the pain points shared by the stakeholders. The recommendations are a combination of many ideas suggested by the people interviewed as a part of this project and discussions of "pain points" analyzed by the interviewers, principal investigator, business owner, and project advisor.